How to Take Care of Yourself This Summer?

We wait all year for one specific vacation. One feeling: to visit our home.

Longer days, time off, maybe a trip back home to see family in Kosovo or Albania, reunions with cousins you haven’t seen in years, weddings, barbecues, beaches. On paper, it sounds like the easiest season of the year. Like exhaling after holding your breath for months.

If you’ve ever ended summer feeling more exhausted than when it began, you’re not alone.

For many people in the Albanian diaspora, summer arrives carrying something heavier: its own quiet pressure. It’s the season of “duhet”. You “should” enjoy every moment because “you waited all year for this.” Add to that the long car rides or flights, juggling two cultures and two sets of expectations, and the constant scroll through everyone else’s perfect summer — and suddenly it makes sense why so many of us come back from August needing a vacation from our vacation.

Here’s the truth: rest is not something you have to earn. You’re allowed to take care of yourself even when the pressure of the summer season says you should be having the time of your life.

Why summer can feel heavier than it looks

A few reasons this season can quietly drain us:

Travel and family visits. Going home is often joyful, but it can also mean navigating old family dynamics, answering the same questions about your life choices, or feeling like a guest in two places at once, never quite belonging fully to either. That in-between feeling has a weight of its own.

Packed schedules. Weddings, visits to relatives, friends passing through. Summer calendars fill up fast, often leaving little room to simply do nothing.

Financial pressure. Flights, gifts, family events. The costs add up, and the stress of showing up the right way can sit quietly underneath all the smiles.

Social comparison. Every scroll shows someone on a beach, at a festival, on a dream trip. It’s easy to feel like your summer should look a certain way, and to feel guilty when it doesn’t. One study found that people who took just one week off social media reported feeling measurably happier and more satisfied with their lives.

Disrupted routines. Sleep, movement, eating well, therapy are the things that quietly hold us together and often get paused “just for the summer.” Research shows that even short-term sleep disruption has real effects on mood and emotional regulation. The small structures we build around ourselves matter more than we realise, until they’re gone.

None of this means something is wrong with you. It means you’re human, and your nervous system doesn’t take a summer break just because the calendar says so.

There is this certain pressure that you have to have fun. You have to enjoy it because you waited all year for this. But joy doesn’t do well under pressure. Once you turn it into an obligation, you’ve already made room for disappointment.

Small ways to take care of yourself this summer

1. Give yourself permission to say no, kindly. You don’t have to attend every gathering or say yes to every plan. A simple “I’d love to, but I need a quieter weekend this time” is enough. Saying no to one thing is often saying yes to your own energy.

2. Protect a little bit of routine. You don’t need your entire routine to stay the same, but keeping one or two anchors is enough, such as a regular bedtime, a short walk, or five quiet minutes in the morning. All of these can help your body feel safe even when everything else is in motion.

3. Notice the comparison spiral and step back from it. If scrolling through everyone’s highlights leaves you feeling worse, that’s a sign. It’s okay to put the phone down. Your summer doesn’t need an audience to be worth having.

4. Let home visits be what they are: complicated and meaningful at the same time. You can love your family and also find visits exhausting. Both things can be true. Give yourself permission to step outside for air, take a walk alone, or sit quietly for ten minutes when it feels overwhelming.

5. Budget for your peace, not just your plans. If finances are adding stress, it’s okay to be honest (with yourself and sometimes with family) about what you can and can’t do this year. Boundaries around money are still boundaries.

6. Make space to talk about how you’re really doing. Often the people around us assume everything is fine just because we are trying to seem so. You don’t have to perform for anyone, including yourself.

It’s okay to ask for support

If this summer is bringing up stress, anxiety, family tension, or just a heaviness you can’t quite name, you don’t have to push through it alone. Sometimes the most useful thing is simply talking to someone who understands where you’re coming from.

That’s what Mendje is for.

This summer, we hope you get to enjoy the sun, the sea, the family, and the “qejf”, but we also hope you remember that taking care of your mind is part of taking care of your summer. You deserve both.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not replace professional psychological support.

Scientific sources: PLOS ONE (Hanley, Watt & Coventry, 2019) — Taking a Break from Facebook and Instagram; Sleep (Tomaso, Johnson & Nelson, 2021) — Sleep Deprivation and Mood: A Meta-Analysis; Media Psychology (Meier & Johnson, 2023) — Social Media, Upward Comparison, and Emotion; Behavioral Sciences (Garcini et al., 2025) — Cultural Stress and Mental Health in Immigrant Families; The Lancet Psychiatry (Bhui et al., 2023) — Mental Health Challenges of the Diaspora; Society and Mental Health (Steptoe et al., 2013) — Vacation, Restoration, and Mental Health.

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